Kiwi at the Lab

Common Kiwifruit from the species A. Deliciosa

As every sweet tooth who has ever been scolded by the authorities (parents) that maybe those teeth won't be around much longer if you continue to dissolve them daily in sugar knows, sometimes you have to seek out sweet alternatives when given the opportunity.  Our Carly is just such a mastermind    

Good Earth Chocolate Chip Cookie, Galleria, Edina

sweet tooth who, if not watched literally with a 'sweetsie' camera will do such things as: Exhibit A.) sneak an enormous batch of Halloween candy from a sister, eat it in her own room, then plant the wrappers in said sister's room, only to later deny all charges; Exhibit B.) pop a candy mint in the mouth before bed at night after brushing her teeth, claiming "it makes my breath good;" Exhibit C) in the morning, when dad isn't looking, the sweet tooth sneaks a Hershey's candy bar into her day's lunchbox.  And so, needless to say, with such accumulated evidence against the culprit, the authorities have to try to dig up little adventures that might emphasize things like fruit, that old-fashioned source of sugar needs.  We found such a place a few weeks back close to home which we think provides the sufficient illusion of healthy eating by offering a variety

of fruit-based  yogurts and sweet-to-sour toppings.  The new Yogurt Lab is located by Panera in Onalaska and displays its flavor selections as letters on a chemical table, which we figure has got to be  

much better for  you than other kinds of dessert labeling.  As Carly hovers over the hundreds of sweet toppings for her fruity yogurt, she has found out that kiwi chunks have astonishingly similar properties to Starburst Candies and, because it is indeed fruit (although 8 grams of naturally occurring sugar per

dose!), the authorities have been known to let her heap it on over lime or peach yogurt, creating, in name anyway, one of the healthiest bowls of yogurt known to Childkind.

Weeknight Recipes

The Simple Art of the Medallion

Quarry Lane wrote about the beauty of the pork loin in a previous post a couple of weeks back – that ready-made tube of meat that needs little more than a browning, an oven roast, and then a final slicing to create those pork discs everybody likes.  Well, there is one more step to take in the final evolution of the art of pork loin cooking.  To 'medallion,' in the case of the loin, is to cut it into the desired discs first, then apply whatever cooking process the recipe calls for.  For 'Pork Medallions with Roasted Nectarines,' out of the Williams Sonoma One Pot of the Day Cookbook, the recipe picture above

shows to cut the medallions into 1/2 inch to 3/4 inch discs, lay those first in pan heat, 4-5 mins. per side, then let 'em sit while you work off of the pan juices and bits.  Now, I learned that I do like to play around with recipes these days, either by choice or by the fact that I just don't have all the stuff in the house.  This ingredient list wanted me to add some hard cider to the pan juices, drop some rosemary in and eventually top it all off with 'grainy mustard.'  The problem is nobody here digs hard cider. Rosemary is, as far as I'm concerned, an adult herb, and grainy mustard tends to go over with a sour face.  So I found some little apple juices in the fridge and let that reduce in the pan, allowing it to pick up some of the fruit that I knew the recipe was going for...the roasted nectarines,

I also decided to play with the cut size of the meat a bit.  I've had medallions at restaurants that are very thick and pink, oozing up with the properly heated juice through the center, so I cut our loin, for fun, to around 2 1/2 inches, browned those, then roasted along with the nectarine slices for an amount of time that has to be tested.  I had already baked some Yukon Golds, smashed those up, skins on, added thick milk, (lactose free) butter, then splattered the top of the plated dollop with the roasted juices from the pork and nectarine – who needs heaps of gravy when you have such a concentrated flavor to add to the potatoes? Juicy, filet mignon-size roasted pork loins, touched by a bit of sweet yet sour fruit, accompanied by peasant-style mash potatoes, was an easy but edible semi-gourmet weeknight meal.  

Take Us Out to the Ballgame...
But First How's About an Oyster? 

A 'doublie' taken Father's Day Miller Stadium Milwaukee

When traveling with wild baseball hooligans, it's hard to predict what might happen next.  Not that the standard long drive to the sports city isn't enough to stir things up – the sibling fighting, the hunger pains (the sugar pains more like it), the borrrrrrdom – but what happens when you get there and find out that some of those stand-by entertainments of old don't cut it anymore?  

Indoor Waterpark at Mpls. Downtown Marriott Depot

What is a father of wild baseball hooligans to do?  Well, when in Minneapolis, you take 

them shopping, admire the architecture along the way, consider the history of the place,  

go to a good restaurant before the ballgame, and hope for fireworks at night's end of course.  Carly's first oyster experience at McCormick and Schmick's on Nicollet Mall, above, came verrrry cautiously.  Some poking and prodding of the slimy gray goo and finally a licking of the finger convinced her that Blue Points and St. James Rivers might not be her thing.  The Popcorn shrimp was darned good though!  Only five blocks around the corner the new Target Twins Stadium stood, open air, still under a 6 o'clock sunlight, clean, quiet and cheery.

One stadium beer and two innings later, well, we tried some shopping (the poor Twinkies were getting beat good by that time), and came back for a few innings more and enjoyed some very fortunate seats.  By the seventh inning, all wild baseball hooligans were ready to walk back to the motel, only a ten minute walk away.  As we sat in our little hotel chairs and pull out couch watching the newest Muppet motion picture, out our third floor window, framed as though a TV in itself, fireworks started to flash up above the apartment complex across the street and went on for half an hour – the largest show we've ever seen in our lives.  

We kept one eye on the Muppets and one on the fireworks until they finally died down and the traffic outside slowed to a quiet rolling murmur.  The next morning, I walked a block down toward the river to see where the fireworks must have launched from.  Mill Run Park at St. Anthony Falls, the grandest of historical parks in the city, offering long biking, walking and viewing areas.

 Time to head back home and start planning for the next baseball trip.

  

Day Butler on King



"But Uncle Merle," would say Little Jack what seemed to be twenty times a day.  It was how Little Jack said it, with a long and sentimental emphasis on Uncle that got to Merle and always made him think about Jody and Buffy in the old melodrama TV show Family Affair, which he used to watch

as if it were a minor religion when he was a kid.  Mistress Suzanne was also a fan of the old show. In fact, she said upon his interview for the job as 'Day-Butler,' "I'm looking for someone who is a cross between Mr. French and a Charleston chef.  You fit the bill."  Merle had no children of his own.  When he moved to Charleston, his job as local meat

selector at Husk was one of the most enviable side-chef jobs in the city, no doubt, but he wanted to live on King Street and there was no way he could afford that coming directly off the boat, so to speak, from Florida. Certainly no funds to draw from just as yet.  He applied to get into the King building by re-creating himself – as what was advertised as a Day Butler.  No problem, he thought, as he looked through a very minimal amount of the creative fine print on the contract.  I've cooked, I've cleaned, and overall I've janitored for my own six brothers and sisters growing up, he said to himself, so why not Day Butler?  Mistress Suzanne Manchester, as she demanded to be called, only had to hear that Merle was at Husk and her entrancing brown eyes, heavily laden with artwork around the lashes, lit up.  "You're hired."  Mistress Suzanne's husband, it turned out, owned the building

along with what Merle came to learn sixteen other pieces of property down in Charleston, which was, frankly, a coup d' real estate, unheard of for a city which had boasted the number one travel destination in America for nearly a decade running.  The husband got into the Monopoly of the downtown historical district before all the city's awards began to roll in and he now owned some of the hottest commodities in the nation. If one small pub and eatery didn't make it – too many plans, not enough financial backing – it didn't matter.  There was always another up and coming chef in the making licking his or her own chops waiting to invest a week later.  It was because of this stroke of luck and investment brilliance that the family was able to virtually pick and choose tenants in the King building.  They kept the fifth floor vacant until

they found the right tenant, depending upon their family needs.  Mr. Manchester set up his own fishing guide, his wife and children two doors down; Little Jack's tutor lived across the hall (what help he was Merle found out quickly!). An ice cream maker called home three doors down.  It wasn't exactly the kind of natural set-up Merle would have ever considered plausible based on where he grew up, on a small farm on the outskirts of the Soldier Grove, Wisconsin, but this was the new game

 he was in, and he was, for lack of a better way of putting it, game.

Husk, Charleston



One year in Charleston South Carolina had certainly changed Merle and his understanding of food, namely how to prepare it for the sake of something other than personal appetite or mere mass production.  Cooking, he thought, had been something like an athletic event when he worked down at the Sweet Shack on Captiva Island, Florida.

Down there the days might be long but the nights were short, for he was working there nights, and could remember the frantic hustle of the small kitchen.  Nobody seated in the dining room looking inward to the kitchen could possibly realize that the Shack's prep room was packed with six cooks and chaotic. It was full-on busy all the time.  Out back in the parking lot of the Sweet Shack they ran

a smoker day and night.  Merle would prepare pounds upon pounds of baby backs, rubbing them down with a ginger-based and lime zest sprinkle that had become famous there on Captiva, and would later, with the help of one or two other secret ingredients, win him an award at the Airport Restaurant, Piccadilly Lilly in Wisconsin.


It was in Florida, though, where Merle began to see that cooking for mass audiences was different than the individualized meal that he grew up cooking for his six brothers and sisters in Soldier's Grove, Wisconsin.  His father was a farm cooperative representative and he spent his days roaming the endless rural by-ways of the bountiful Wisconsin farm fields in his black '64 Chevy, often carrying along with him in the back new specs for small machinery that he thought could lighten the load for the standard over-worked small farm owner.

His mother, of Italian descent, had grown up in the small Tuscan village of Montepulciano, where her father owned and ran a 7th generation olive farm.  Merle could still find in certain specialty stores in Madison or Milwaukee (now online) stocks of the famous Montepulciano Olive Oil.  


He reached South Carolina via a short stint as sous chef on a cruise boat, heading northwards one day by picking up all his belongings in his small permanent hotel room at the Captiva Seven Seas Resort (he was a consultant for the resort restaurant as well), and found an apartment near the Restoration on King hotel in the center of the shops and restaurant scene in Charleston.  One interview led to another, until Merle's story of Montepulciano Olive Oil picqued the interest of the manager at the world-famous Husk Restaurant, where they took buying

local to an extreme which Merle had yet seen.  The head chef and owner Sean Brock owned a parcel of farmland nearby and would await news each day as to what was ripe for picking, would harvest it, then create a menu to showcase those products that day.  There was no set menu.  Brock collected his own heirloom seeds and grew personalized tomatoes that tasted as they had for previous generations before mass production had sapped all of the energy and flavor out of the ordinary market tomato.  The idea at Husk was to re-live South Carolina history not only through the taste buds but through the  traditional rituals of service, preparation, and setting.  Merle, with his own background in local, and in ribs preparation, was hired on the spot to be in charge of an all local meat selection.

Julia's Key West at Red Pines

Key West Salad at Red Pines 

The Quarry Lane's living motto 'Everyday's an Adventure,' might lead to any number of good eating places in our river town and environs.  Hook up the bikes, hop in the car, park somewhere and the bike tires will hopefully lead to somewhere not far from the trail.  One of the great 'trail to table' trips that I can remember doing

frequently in the past was the great Lake Onalaska to Trempealeau Hotel bike cruise. The 15-miler each way is quite an investment in time and energy, but the Great River State Trail, through Midway,  New Amsterdam, Holmen, and then on into Trempealeau, gives the rider a full view of Wisconsin history and nature like no other as it snakes through small rural town, thick farm field, and eventually a National Wildlife Refuge, which literally teems with untouched wildlife and backwater scenery.

The description of the Hotel says it well, "Founded in 1851, Trempealeau is a place where history is close at hand.  Wooded bluffs, where French explorers established camp, overlook the Mississippi River, and sacred Indian mounds at Perrot State Park remind us of our nation's inception.  The beauty of the natural world and the pleasure of seeking a

quiet respite from the fast-paced world are values held dear in Trempealeau.  Our peaceful river town is a well-kept secret that we welcome you to discover."

Although the Hotel trip is the epitome of 'trail to table,' it has lost the battle to time itself, and we have found an abbreviated bike ride just off the trail in Onalaska at Red Pines.  We park directly on cty. Z leading into Brice Prairie, and only a short bike ride into the township, Red Pines stands at the crest of a short bluff overlooking the backwaters of the Black River.

Northwoods cedar by design, the bar and grill captures the sunfish bait and tackle spirit of the

Lake Onalaska fishing scene.  After a short ride into Midway, Julia and I redirected to Red Pines and sat out on the open air patio watching the sunshine skim off the lush green island barriers and the pontoons bobbing lazily along the shoreline below.









 

7-13

"High horns, low horns, silence, and finally a pandemonium of trumpets, rattles, croaks, and cries that almost shakes the bog with its nearness, but without yet disclosing whence it comes.  At last a glint of sun reveals the approach of a great echelon of birds. On motionless wing they emerge from the lifting mists, sweep a final arc of the sky, and settle in clangorous descending spirals to their feeding grounds.  A new day has begun on the crane marsh."  – Aldo Leopold, from "Marshland Elegy"


The green underworld is but a few turns of the bike tire from the edges of the city.  County Z down into Brices Prairie where the high ground of bluff and concrete gives way to a flickering lushness seen in few other places on earth.  

It is a full regard for life here, a bounty, nearly always in flux and growth, what one could almost determine, without the hand of human intervention, something of a harmony between the natural currents of wind and water and the vegetation that has learned to adapt to its contours or has been forced to release onto another path.  As bikers, we speed through the variety; farm fields, striving under all conditions, a mere scenery; we slow down long enough for the mosquito to land, the gnats to swarm, the double dragon fly to helicopter by, and we know – for we can see it, feel it – that there is more here than the stiff dimensions of a painted canvas.